


The Way You Look at Me

by R_S



Category: One Piece
Genre: Blood and Injury, Body observation, Gentle Kissing, Holding, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 16:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11467116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_S/pseuds/R_S
Summary: Luffy's attentive, as he and his crew tend to their wounded after leaving Little Garden.





	The Way You Look at Me

**Author's Note:**

> TIMING: Right after Little Garden, the reference to Nami needing something cool to drink is meant as to foreshadow that she's not yet collapsed from the kestia bite.   
> *Technically Zoro's not given coherent consent - so this is a non-con ??  
> *Technically Luffy is only 17 years old, and Zoro is 19 - so this is also an underage ??   
> Both warnings have been added just in case, and please if you have triggers, read everything cautiously.

The Grand Line surges. Undulations of dark water creating massive blue humps that go on forever. Laced with grills of slate white foam. Fish come up right beside the tiny caravel, to turn their luminescent bellies at them under the surface. Great schools of thousands of fishes. All taking turns to flash their flippers up at the sun, as if they are waving hello.

 

“You’re out here _training_?”

“Yea, I am! Got a problem with that, Eyebrow?”

 

Zoro’s glaring forests into his blonde nakama. White katana held solidly in both hands after having brought the weapon down in a sweeping arch. The move pivots the Strawhat swordsman’s recently lacerated ankles. Pulling thick, dark stitching. Without forethought, their first aid kit had been devastated early on. Not having yet the opportunity to restock, the green haired pirate had used handfuls of strings torn from a pair of old trousers as sutures.

 

Blood oozed from gaping bronzed flesh, trickling wetly across the bridge of each foot. Leaving gloppy sticky smears on the deck. The sight rolls Sanji’s stomach. Turning his shoulder, the blonde cook’s pulling out his cigarette pack and put one pale shaft to his lips. “Do whatever you want.” Stalking away. Vivi had said Nami needed something cool to drink, and he was on his way to the galley anyway. He doesn’t give a _shit_ what happens to that mossy-brained idiot.

The galley door slams. Startling seagulls from the upper railing.

 

 

“What are you looking at?” A leer, so much alike a snarl. Showing off a line of white teeth and one sharp canine. That tanned jaw strong enough to hold and _use_ the considerable weight of legendary meito, Wado Ichimonji. “Sencho?”

Luffy’s leaned his back up against Merry’s main mast. Arms folded up behind his head with his straw hat dangling from its string. Sanji finally gone into the galley, and the Pirate Captain knows Usopp is sleeping in the men’s quarters. Nami and Vivi in the womens’ quarters… “Looking at Zoro.”

“And why…” Brought his katana’s glinting edge around under the sun, the nineteen year old’s bare shoulders glistening for sweat and sea spray. “…are you looking at me?” Shuddering for every stroke. Every footing, no matter how carefully placed. Bodyweight precariously balanced on what bone and cartilage had been left miraculously _intact_ after the slice that by all rights should have removed both the young man’s feet. Sent Zoro tumbling from that grotesquely-smiling birthday cake like a candle spirting blood.

“Did Zoro really think he’d be able to fight like that?” Luffy’s shuffled, sitting forward. Cross-legged on the deck.

“You were…” Panting for a rotation that’s wrenched Zoro’s left leg back. Both hear home-made stitches strain, skin ripping. Because Zoro is definitely _not_ made of rubber. Gouts of dark blood glut out over each heel. “… _ah…_ a-a lot of help.” Narrowed green eyes grip onto his captain. Jolts of sharp discomfort screaming up each leg to clamor for immediate admittance at the base of his skull. Luffy’s eyes, big and brown, his captain never looks away. When he’s usually begging like a baby puppy dog to fetch at a stick. When Luffy is facing him. Really facing him. The seventeen year old pirate Captain makes Zoro _want_ to give him everything. Everything, and more after it’s all used up. “Getting yourself… _ah!_ ” Wado’s stabbed into the deck. Zoro grasping one hand just under the hilts so the sharp edge can cut a shallow line into his palm. On his knees. “Ge-getting b-brainwashed…. _idiot_ Sencho!”

 

 

Luffy is very _familiar_ with shock. Shanks’ arm had been taken off. Rent from the man’s body at the shoulder, by the serrated fangs of a Sea King. The redheaded man still managing to drag both himself and defenseless seven-year-old-hammer to shore. Over the next three days Luffy had tried, but ultimately failed in blocking out the screams that carried all the way to his little room in Makino’s bar from the small island dock. Where onboard a massive galleon with blood red sails, the man’s crew tended the wound.

 

“ _Don’t_ you look at me like that.”

 _Zoro’s on his knees._ “Like what?” Crossing both pale arms over his red vest, Luffy’s lilts his head to one side. A smile pulling at the scar just under his left eye. “How’m I supposed to look at Zoro?”

“ _Not_ like that!”       

“Ne? How?”

“You’re _doing it_ right now!”

 

Down on his stomach, gold buttons digging into Luffy’s chest. He’s put his chin on crossed forearms, while Zoro’s collapsed forward on his hands. Unable to put even the slightest amount of pressure on throbbing ankles. Rolling onto his back, and growling between clenched teeth. Clenched because they won’t stop chattering. Because it’s a truth, he _can’t_ get up. All he can do is look up at the sky overhead. Infinitely blue, one or two puffs of cloud behind Merry’s painted sail full of sea air.

Luffy’s propped himself up on one shoulder. A hand in his black hair. Observing Zoro’s shivering. Green hair matted to his sweaty scalp. The older’s cheeks, flushed pink. Blotched all over his chest. Struggling to strip himself out of everything except his black trousers. “I said quit it.”

“E-eh?” The young captain, fixated on a rippling abdominal wall the color of toasted caramel. Captivated by defined lines formed by hard muscle, like letters on a living manuscript. Thousands and thousands of strokes required to create just one word. Millions. Recording all the years Zoro has been a swordsman, both of land and of sea.

“Dammit, Luffy!” Agitated by pain and a perpetual lack of sleep, Zoro’s pitched sideways. Keeping his legs out of the way, for grabbing hold of his captain’s red vest. Pinning Luffy beneath him.

“Shi-shishi-shi.” He could get away, Luffy. But he’s gone limp instead. Arms relaxed down on the deck.

Green eyes glare, tearing fibers in the younger’s vest, but not caring. _What’s so funny, eh?_ A thirst settles in Zoro. To know. Alike to the day he sat before Master Koshiro, and requested he be allowed to carry Kuina’s katana which lies a few feet away. Blood stuck in-between tight silk wrapped round the pommel. The blade will need sharpening and polishing after he’d thoughtlessly shoved it into hard wooden planking. Thirsty… The sound of the sea loud in Zoro’s ears. A roar answered by gentle chiming of the three brass dewdrops hung from his left lobe. _Shi shishiShi shi Shishi_ Giggling. Luffy is two years younger than Zoro, physically. The former Pirate Hunter subscribing to an amusing theory that Luffy may really only be three years old, and that he’s just tall for his age. Only at times when his captain puts his arms around him. When Zoro can feel simmering warmth caress him, provided by limbs he knows have the strength in devastation to surpass his own métier. This delicacy not unfamiliar, but so _rare_ the swordsman’s often convinced himself later he’d been dreaming.

 

When the sun goes down under the edge of the sea, Luffy will hold Zoro down. For Sanji and Vivi to open the gaps of his cut ankles. Leaching out infection using lemons and alcohol. Luffy will cradle his unconscious nakama in his arms, after Zoro’s been bandaged. All night. Resting together on a futon in the galley. When the sun gets in through rounded port holes, Sanji will arrive to prepare breakfast, and Luffy will still be awake. Watchful.

He’s not a doctor. He can’t do anything for Zoro, but this. So he will do this. _Zoro is strong._ Lips that taste like steel, salt, wine, and blood. Luffy indulges, not caring that his cook’s cursing. Coughing on smoke, and stormed out the cabin door. Earnest, in coaxing his swordsman back to the day lit world. Once Luffy’s registered the heartbeats that change, lungs gathering up air, he’s back away. Waiting for Zoro’s jade-green eyes to come open, and find him there. Still watching.

“T-thought…” Voice like gravel, from screaming into his own wadded up shirt. “…said, t’ stop looking at me like that.”

 

Zoro will not remember, later, if his captain had brought his warm body close against his. If they truly shared that long, endless kiss tanged with fever and blood before he’d been dropped back into unconsciousness. “ _Shi-shishi_.” Will never quite be sure he’s heard his captain’s laughter on the fringes of his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments are welcome <3


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